There is tremendous joy in understanding that purpose and meaning in life are self-derived, and that these precious commodities are not some gift from above that can be taken away arbitrarily by a wrathful deity working in mysterious ways.

My Swedenborgian friends might account for the absence of sense being held proof positive of the saintly character by urging that idiots were certainly free from one of the worst evils of this generation denounced by the Swedish Seer as "self-derived intelligence."

Surely this, that for all you who have, in any measure, caught a glimpse of what you ought to be, and have been more or less vainly trying to realise your ideal, and reach your goal, there is a better way than the way of self-centred and self-derived and self-dependent effort.